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In an article titled "Poverty and Neglected Diseases in the 'Other' America," Professor Peter Hotez (George Washington University and the Sabin Vaccine Institute) says that there is evidence that the parasitic diseases toxocariasis, cysticercosis and toxoplasmosis as well as other neglected infections are very common in the United States, especially among poor and underrepresented minority populations living in inner cities and poor rural areas.

Scientists who study cancer may be prone to drawing simplistic conclusions from the powerful molecular tools now available because they don't appreciate how complex the data is that is being generated.

Receiving treatment for non-cancer health issues while being treated by specialists for cancer improves cancer survival rates according to a new study. Lack of primary care utilization in the first six months following lung cancer diagnosis had a marked effect on survival even when controlling for extent of the disease.

Scientists have found that a signaling protein that is key to prostate cancer cell growth is turned on in nearly all recurrent prostate cancers that are resistant to hormone therapy. If the findings hold up, the protein, called Stat5, may be a specific drug target against an extremely difficult-to-treat cancer.

A mechanism which can lead to hay fever and other allergic reactions, by preventing the immune system from regulating itself properly, has been discovered by scientists. This finding will allow therapies to be developed that treat allergies by stopping this mechanism.

A 12-year study of over 7,000 Americans shows that individuals without health insurance experience a dramatic improvement in their subsequent health trends when they become eligible for Medicare at age 65. In an era when health-care coverage is a very prominent issue on the political landscape, this study provides the most rigorous assessment to date of the impact of insurance on health.

Cone-beam breast CT provides exceptional tissue contrast and can potentially reduce examination time with comparable radiation dose to conventional 2D mammography, according to a new study. Cone-beam breast CT employs a large area x-ray beam in conjunction with a flat panel x-ray detector to scan and generate 3D images of the breast.

People with restless legs syndrome are twice as likely to have a stroke or heart disease compared to people without RLS, and the risk is greatest in those with the most frequent and severe symptoms, according to new research.

SAN ANTONIO, Texas -- A combination of a "targeted" therapy and chemotherapy shrank metastatic brain tumors by at least 50 percent in one-fifth of patients with aggressive HER2-positive breast cancer, according to data presented by Dana-Farber Cancer Institute investigators at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (see also Breast Cancer). Lapatinib (Tykerb) and capecitabine (Xeloda) were paired in an extension of a Phase 2 clinical trial in which lapatinib given alone shrank brain metastases significantly in six percent of 241 patients.

Kathy S. Albain, MD, of Loyola University Chicago, presented new data showing for the first time the predictive value of the 21-gene Recurrence Score (RS) assay in patients with node-positive breast cancer. The Breast Cancer Intergroup of North America trial conducted by the Southwest Oncology Group (SWOG 8814) originally showed that patients treated with 6 cycles of chemotherapy with cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, and 5-fluorouracil followed by 5 years of tamoxifen (CAF-T) had superior disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS) compared with patients treated with tamoxifen alone.